Range appliances generally include a cooktop portion and an oven portion. The cooktop portion of certain range appliances includes a griddle burner for heating large cookware, such as griddles and fish poachers. Griddle burners provide flame ports along a length of the griddle burner in order to heat large cookware on the cooktop portion.
Evenly heating large cookware with griddle burners can be difficult due to uneven temperature distributions along a length of the griddle burners. Because the griddle burners are not as long as the griddle, the griddle tends to be hotter at its center and cooler at its ends. If the griddle burner were longer in an effort to offset this effect, the manufacturing cost of the griddle burner would increase accordingly. Furthermore, a minimum firing rate that the griddle burner could support would increase due to the increased perimeter of the griddle burner, thereby increasing a heat output of the griddle burner at its minimum setting. Finally, the extra length could cause the griddle burner to be longer than common cookware, including typical fish poachers, thereby reducing the versatility of the griddle burner as it would no longer be suitable for such cookware.
Accordingly, a burner assembly with features for assisting with heating a griddle and cookware smaller than a griddle would be useful. In particular, a burner assembly with features for assisting with uniformly heating a griddle and uniformly heating cookware smaller than a griddle would be useful.